


A bear, coughing

by Lilliburlero



Series: Consistently Homesick [4]
Category: The Charioteer - Mary Renault, The Marlows - Antonia Forest, White Feathers - Susan Lanigan
Genre: Crossover, Friendship, Gen, Homophobia, Post-Canon, Racism, Sexism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:52:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2260041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1435609/chapters/3018901">'A backward and dilapidated province'</a>, taking the form of a conversation between two marginally less (?) Bossy Types. This follows directly from Chapter 4 of that fic.</p><p>Or, Nicola Marlow has reached That Difficult Age.</p><p>*</p><p>Content advisory: reference to attitudes linking homosexuality and paedophilia; use of a racial epithet (self-applied) which was considered acceptably polite in 1952, when the fic is set, but is no longer so; character expressing sexist views.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A bear, coughing

**Author's Note:**

> This story takes place at the same time, and just after, [Part 2](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1435711) of the series.

They went a bit barmy in Lower Five. Nicola remembered Miranda’s urbane diagnosis of two years ago, and grinned over her writing case.What she was about to do had more than a touch of Lower Fifth insanity about it, but it also seemed wholly necessary and inevitable.Maybe the filched kirbigrips, clandestine photographs and rosebuds in silver paper had seemed so to their perpetrators too.

The finished letter was a stiff, shy little article, but its addressee was not likely to be persuaded by beautiful prose.Either she would get what she asked for or she would not.The Fifths were considered mature enough to manage their refectory affairs unaided by a table prefect, and by great good luck it was Nicola’s turn to collect and distribute the post on the day the reply arrived.The sloping hand with its firm downstrokes spoke as clearly of its author as Patrick’s crabbed secretary or her mother’s wide, thick-nibbed scrawl.She stuffed it into her skirt pocket.

The thought of reading it in the lavatory held an odd repulsiveness, so it had to stay there until the period before morning rec., a free.She left Miranda competently chomping through a Latin unseen, and ambled casually over to the reference section.It was not unusual for such works to offer Nicola distractions of many minutes’ duration, so she reckoned she would not be missed for the time it took to to scan what could be no more, from the thickness of the envelope, than one page of writing-paper.She took a Latin dictionary from the bottom shelf and opened it on her knees, riffling the pages with her left hand as her right thumbnail worked along the envelope in her pocket.As if frustrated, she riffled again, backwards, as she pulled the sheet from the envelope, then counterfeited a discovery, flattening it against the page of the book.The pantomime had been in vain; she took it in entire at a gulp. 

> 9.iii.52
> 
> Dear Nicola,
> 
> The address you asked for is: 88A Kent Road, So’ton, Hants. 
> 
> Yours,
> 
> R. R. Lanyon

It was exactly what she wanted, and she felt utterly and miserably dashed.  The Nicola of Lower VA was different from her fourth form predecessor in the time she was prepared to spend reflecting upon the reasons for her feelings, and she spent a rather distracted rec., and a tedious Geography (Demographics, _not according to the maps,_ she thought with a jolt) engaged in this activity.  She had, she thought, suppressed all expectation of a friendly letter; she had prepared for nothing at all, or a couple of terse sentences saying it wouldn’t be a good idea.  When she found herself idly wondering what the second R stood for, she knew she had it: he did not regard her as a silly child whose fancies must be dismissed or managed, but as a grown person to whom he had been the bearer of unwelcome news, entailing the discharge of a further small responsibility, but with whom he could have absolutely nothing to do.  A little over four years later, at a tipsy picnic in Grantchester Meadows, the thing would present itself unbidden in its social aspect, causing her to roll on her back and murmur drowsily, _oh God! but he treated me like a woman!_ crushing the frail hopes of a shy Girton historian with glorious coils of soft, conker-coloured hair.  But four months shy of her sixteenth birthday, Nicola still believed the world might do her the courtesy of thinking of her as she thought of herself, a human being first and a member of a sex second, so she took personally that which was intended to be most rigorously impersonal.

Lower Fifth introspection had not, however, subsumed Nicola’s essential nature, which was practical and inclined to action.For sensible reasons, which still seemed to her good if not useful, she had postponed even mental composition of the letter until she had secured the address, and now she realised that she had no idea whatever what she should write. _You may not remember me but I’m the girl who_ —absurdity after absurdity occurred to her, producing first cringes, then chuckles.The latter manifested themselves, somewhat unfortunately, during maths.

‘I am delighted, Nicola, that you seem to take such bucolic pleasure in trigonometry. Might you consider contributing to general gaiety by transmitting it to your less happy colleagues?’

‘No—I mean, sorry, Miss Cromwell.’

‘A shame. Euphoria is, of course, a reasonable aesthetic response to scientific truth; hence apocrypha such as Archimedes leaping from his bath.However, if you are not prepared to divulge the cause of your laughter, I shall have to ask you to keep it for your spare time.’

As Cromwellian reproofs went it was a good-natured one and even Nicola enjoyed it; _bucolic pleasure in trigonometry_ entered L.VA’s repertoire for a week or so. The catchphrase had not quite grown stale before Nicola made up her mind: writing was useless.She was going to have to go in person.It would have to await the Easter holidays.She had a good deal of freedom at home, the Marlows being good at minding their own business—like the Foleys, she couldn’t help thinking.Why did everything have to be so damnably _haunted_?But it was unlikely—general unflappability notwithstanding—that Mum would sanction a solo trip to Southampton, no questions asked. Perhaps someone could be taken into confidence—a visit to Miranda was the obvious choice of subterfuge, but Miranda belonged to school, the volume of explanation necessary was overwhelming, and possibly, given the sensitivity of the whole Foley business, criminally hazardous.Nicola no longer believed _Tower Hill_ , but if discovered there would be a huha of such magnitude as to defeat even Miranda’s perverse and particular pleasure in rows. Patrick—but something in her revolted at the notion.He, she thought confusedly, without quite being able to clarify what she meant to herself, would understand too well and in his own way. No, it was safest to go from school, where she could keep her own counsel. And Southampton: that could only really mean one thing. _Lose not a minute_ should be her maxim.

She had, however, begun to despair of finding means by which such an excursion might be accomplished when, passing the library, she ran into Tim.

‘Oh, good.You’ve spared my shanks.’

‘What?’

‘Your cricket woman rang with a message for Craven while I was hanging about in the school office. Saturday’s practice is off.She’s broken something, or sprained it.’

Nicola spent her Saturday afternoons at Wade C.C., training for the upcoming season with the County Ladies, the only girl from Kingscote to do so.

‘I must have been looking uncharacteristically idle,’ Tim continued with light irony, ‘because I was despatched with this.’She handed Nicola a pink telephone-message slip. 

‘Oh, _thanks_ ,’ Nicola remarked gloomily. Now that all the important netball matches of the season were over, the Saturday cricket practice was practically her only opportunity to play something competitive and challenging. Games with Lower VA, a sizeable moiety of whom had concluded that rushing about red-faced and panting was beneath the dignity of venerable persons rising sixteen, didn't really count. 

‘Pleasure’s all mine.You wouldn’t happen to know where that sister—’

‘ _Not_ her keeper—’ 

Nicola was within yards of the pigeonholes outside the staff-room before she realised what it meant. Of course, staff were known to compare notes, but the secretary could not possibly check on every message she sent out, and the line of communication had become plausibly fractured.It was distinctly bad form to withhold a telephone message really, but perhaps, when it was only to be transmitted to herself in any case, she’d just cut out the middleman. She knew that, especially after last year’s Conduct Mark, discovery was certain to mean the sack, but set against everything Robert Anquetil had lost―if you looked at it in a bear-that-coughed sort of way, _because of her_ , because an imbecile twelve-year-old could not contain her curiosity about a house called Mariners―continued attendance at Kingscote was picayune stuff.She shredded the pink slip into flitters.

This time, though, she did things properly. She slipped out to the phone box on Friary Road one evening before tea and rang the station with an enquiry about timetables and the price of a return, then secured the fare, plus a half-crown contingency fund, with a combination of an illicit small loan from Miranda and a permissible withdrawal to cover her subscription to the British Falconers' Club (not in fact due until August, but the secretary had no way of knowing that.)And after breakfast that Saturday, she set off as she always did for the bus into Wade with the shopping party.It was a nuisance having to bring with her a kit-bag containing games clothes and shoes, but she could see no safe way of avoiding it.

Like her previous experiences of bounds-breaking, it was laughably easy.The cricket club was in the same direction as the shops, but she easily invented a County team-mate from Wade Abbas Collegiate who had asked her for elevenses; this satisfied Avril Frere as it would not have done the still-jumpy Gina French, and she set off in the direction of the bungalows that lined the road to the station.

Arriving in Southampton just about the time that the cancelled practice might have been expected to begin, Nicola asked the way to Kent Road, and was told to catch the local stopper to the first station, St Denys.Alighting there and crossing the bridge, she was struck by the stench: a reek like muck-spreading, combined with some poisonous industrial effluent.There were bomb-sites at every turn: ragged, dirty, fearless children crawled and clambered over them, whooping.She was suddenly very glad of her navy uniform under her macintosh, her black felt hat, stockings and shoes: new Kingscote scarlet would have made her dangerously conspicuous; as it was, she attracted curious, hostile glances from some of the urchins. The kit-bag, a hand-me-down of Giles’s, became rather than a burden, a fortification.88A was a shabby pre-war semi-detached house, set beside a coal-merchant’s yard. The paintwork on the door and front bay-window was was scuffed and bubbled, but the panes of the latter were clean. The gate moved smoothly on its hinge, the path was weeded and the patch of front garden turned over as if ready for planting, all of which set the mean house apart from its fellows.

Nicola knocked on the front door.A long interval passed, during which she recalled to mind everything that could still go wrong―he might have found a ship since he was last in touch with Lanyon, he might be out, it might be the wrong house after all―

An elderly West Indian woman wearing a pink housecoat and slippers opened the door.  She gave Nicola an appraising look, her head cocked to one side. 

‘Yes?’

‘Good afternoon.I’m looking for Mr Anquetil.’

‘H’m.’

‘Robert Anquetil. Doesn’t he live here?’

‘He lives here. What do you want?’  

‘He―I―I have a message for him,’ Nicola stammered.This was not, she considered, untrue, though she immediately saw the potential objection. ‘A personal message, though. I have to give it to him direct.’

‘Di―rect.’The landlady raised her grey eyebrow, but seemed to conclude that it was none of her business after all. She indicated down the hall. ‘Number 3.’She stepped aside only minutely, and Nicola squeezed by. The landlady lumbered up the stairs, singing in a voice a little cracked by age but, Nicola realised with mild startlement, _trained_ , a snatch from Mozart’s _Requiem_.  

She knocked; the plywood boomed cheaply.There was no answer for a moment, then a cautious, muffled, ‘Hullo? Hullo? Lucia?’

‘Um―no―’

‘Hang on a sec―’

Anquetil came to the door.Nicola was astonished to find she did not have to look up to meet his eye; and he was―not young, but no longer of the amorphous class _grown-up_ ; instead, a man just about halfway through his three-score and ten.She remembered his face tanned, alert and weather-worn; now it was sallow, shadowed, slack with recent sleep.

‘Excuse me―I think you must have the wrong― _Nicola_?’

He ran a hand through uncombed hair and stared. He was― _handsome_ , Nicola thought irrelevantly, even in open, untucked flannel shirt, canvas trousers and bare feet.Rather especially so.

‘Yes. Hullo, Mr Anquetil.’She felt unutterably foolish; her face flared.

‘What on earth are you―you’d better come―oh God. Look, no. I’m sorry. It’s barely even a bedsitter.I can’t. There’s no living-room, it’s all been converted. No kitchen even―and no café for miles.’

‘‘S no different from the _Golden Enterprise_ , is it?’

‘Well yes, Nicola, it _is_ , you know. You are―everything is―but―don't stand there gaping like a hooked cod, anyway.' 

He beckoned her in. Nicola tried not to look around, in which attempt she was aided by thegloom. A small open window on the back wall served for both light and ventilation; the room smelt of an odd mixture of food, human frowst and beeswax polish.He flicked the light-switch, filling the room with yellow lividity. The iron-framed single bed, which filled a third of the narrow quarters, was unmade and he quickly moved to straighten sheets and blankets.Beneath the window was a stainless-steel sink and draining board, mounted on a cupboard. At a right-angle to that, along the other long wall, was a shelf holding a gas ring and a kettle, a folded gate-legged table and one straight-backed chair. At the foot of the bed was a sea-chest, on which were propped half-a-dozen books.Cracked brick-red lino covered the floor. She could not refrain from thinking that the peeling, tidemarked wallpaper was all that kept it from looking just as she imagined a prison cell.

‘I’m most frightfully sorry―I―’

‘What?’ He turned from the bed. His face was expressionlessly cold―she recognised that now he’d had a moment to wake up and master his surprise, she was in the presence of a potential bate that would put Cromwell at her most terrifying in the twopence-halfpenny category, by comparison with which her father’s most magniloquent Defaulters manner was as the purring of Mrs Bertie’s cat, that made Giles’s icy rebuff in Port Wade―oh lor’, in three years she’d learned absolutely _nothing at all_. 

‘You’re most frightfully sorry that you showed up on my doorstep without leave or notice, expecting me to entertain you? I should have thought it a lapse of manners tolerably easy to avoid.’  

He looked her up and down with crisp disgust.   

‘Put down that bag at least.’She automatically put her hand to her hat. ‘I don’t remember inviting you to stop, Nicola, but yes, you may.’   

He held out his hand for her hat and coat and inclined his head towards the chair.This was infinitely worse than being turned away at the door, and it dawned on her, was meant to be.She tried to remember what she had imagined her reception might be, and found that, unlike the time she had impulsively run off to Port Wade, she had pictured very little.Had she, assuming that the ordinary rules of paying a call did not apply to somebody recently released from prison, presupposed his gratitude? She could not remember framing it so in her mind―but here she was; what a sickening, sanctimonious ass she was. He hung her coat and hat on the back of the door and continued to make the bed. 

‘I―Mr―’ she began.

‘Be quiet.’Finally, he settled the orange candlewick bedspread and sat on the bed facing her. ‘Now, do you care to tell me the meaning of this visit?’

‘I―heard―what had happened to you since we last met and I wanted to―say―I―wanted to thank you.Because we never did.’

‘Someone gave you my address. Why didn’t you write?’

‘I couldn’t.’

‘ _Couldn’t_? I think I remember a shockingly ignorant girl―smaller than you―who didn’t know where―or indeed _what_ ―the Spree is.I was under the impression schools still taught penmanship, though.’

‘I mean I didn’t know what to say. I―’ her submerged reasoning surfaced, and she found, to her relief, that it was at least remotely honourable.‘I wanted to see you.To thank you in person, and I knew if I wrote you would―you would―’

‘I should tell you on no account to come. Quite right. So, guessing pretty accurately what my wishes might be, you decided to ride roughshod over them.' 

‘No―I didn’t think it through. Not like that.’

‘Evidently you didn’t think it through _at all_. How do you know Ralph Lanyon?’   

‘How do _you_ know he―’

‘Oh, Nick.’She’d fallen, she realised, for a pretty hoary interrogator’s trick. His lips twitched and a glimmer started in his eye. ‘Because _I_ know Ralph Lanyon.He never lets you off. Not if he likes you, anyway.’The softening of his face, Nicola considered, was something other than an overture to forgiveness of her―in fact, it had very little to do with her at all―but it would serve the same purpose as one. ‘Would you like tea?’

‘Yes, please.’

He filled the kettle and put it on the gas.Crouching in front of the cupboard, he turned with a quick smile.‘Milk’s condensed, I’m afraid.Just like old times.’

‘It’s all right. I rather like it.’ 

‘Me too.And _strong_ tea, I remember. Undrinkable swaddy slops.’He retrieved a caddy, a tin of milk, two cups and a brown earthenware pot.

Recognising a Lanyonesque phrase, Nicola smiled uncertainly.

Leaning against the sink, Anquetil shook his head wearily.‘I’m perfectly furious with him.And don’t think you’re off the hook, Miss Marlow.’ His accent sounded for a moment almost like Ted Coulthard’s: the long oo in hook, the Rs given their full value. ‘But you’d better tell me the story from the start.’ 

‘There’s not much _to_ tell, really. Mr Lanyon came to lecture at Colebridge College, and Major Clavering―my sister Rowan sometimes borrows a mount from him, a chestnut―fixed him and―and―Mr Odell up with lodgings.Mr Odell is friends with Mr Merrick, the MP, and I used to go hawking with his son Patrick sometimes. And they asked Patrick and me to tea at half-term last autumn.’

‘And you proceeded to dazzle Ralph with a broadside-by-broadside account of the Battle of the Nile?’

Nicola grinned.‘Channel Fleet actions leading up to the Trafalgar campaign, actually. We got on. I liked him rather awfully.’

‘It was probably mutual. Up to a point.’

She swallowed audibly.

He cast her a disapproving look. ‘You’re not developing a horrible mind, cooped up with all those hysterical females, are you, Nick?I meant that Ralph likes people who give him a hard time, and I sense you’re rather tender-hearted with your friends.’

The kettle whistled fortuitously.Robert warmed the pot, thriftily returning the water to the kettle, spooned tea, poured and stirred. He patted his pockets.

‘D’you want a knife for the tin?’Nicola offered hers.

‘Thanks.’ He stabbed deftly and handed it back. ‘Go on.’

‘And, so, in the Christmas hols, we went over there―to Stable Cottage, rather a lot.Most days, probably. And then―well, the Merricks always have a hooli on Twelfth Night, and there was a bit of a panic with one of my sister’s stepchildren getting lost at it―not Rowan’s step, she’s not married, there are rather hordes of us―’

‘I remember―’

 ‘―that bit of it doesn’t really matter, except that when I was looking for Rose I happened to―overhear―something about you.  And Mr Lanyon―’

 ‘―tight as a tick, no doubt, took it upon himself to explain. Good Lord. How old are you now?’

‘Sixteen in July.’

‘Did you understand what he was talking about?’

‘Yes. I think so. I think,’ she said fiercely, ‘it was just about the most―filthy thing I’d ever heard.I mean―what they did―the police―not what you―I don’t care what you―’ She subsided into confusion, clenching clammy fists and squeezing her eyes shut.

‘Here,’ he handed her the cup of tea. ‘I wasn’t the first, and I shan’t be the last.’

She looked up.‘But you―saved our lives.’

He flinched. ‘You saved your own lives,‘ he said stiffly.‘I just saw a signal and did what any duffer would’ve in the circumstances. How are Peter and Virginia?’

‘All right, I suppose.Yes, all right.’ She sipped at her tea. 

‘Good. And your twin―Lawrie?’ He took a tin from the night-stand beside the bed, rolled a thin cigarette and lit it.

‘All right. How are _you_?’ she said.  

‘All right.’  

Thinking of the family joke, _I’m all right_ ― _are you all right?_ , Nicola smiled tightly into her tea. 

‘Are you going to sea?’

He shrugged. ‘The big companies wouldn’t touch me, and there aren't as many private ships as there were before the war. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the sort of criminal record a captain might be persuaded to overlook is the sort I haven’t got. I get by. Lucia appreciates a hand around the house, and I can pick up day labour. Well, night, at the moment.’ 

‘I'm sorry for waking you.'

'Don't mention it,' he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

'She has a beautiful singing voice.Your―landlady.’ 

‘My cousin, as it happens. First, once removed.Is that what someone is when she’s your mother’s cousin?’

‘Oh,’ Nicola stuttered, flabbergasted.‘I couldn’t say.You don’t look―’

‘Coloured?’ he snapped, at the same time as Nicola finished, weakly, _like her_. ‘No? Depends on one’s situation, doesn’t it? In Mississippi I rather fancy I would. And in Cape Town another thing again. Anyway, Lucia was an opera singer. Long story, interesting one. I’d tell it, but I’ve already consumed rather a lot of your half-term. I don’t suppose your people know you―’

‘Half―? Oh.’

Anquetil looked at her kit bag, and back at her face. ‘Oh, _Nick_. They don’t take cross-dressing cabin boys, not these days.’  

‘No―I mean.’She explained.

‘But why, you little fool? They’ll give you the boot if you’re caught.’ 

‘Doesn’t matter. Not compared to what―you went through.’ 

‘Compared to―has it occurred to you that I might not _quite_ provide a pattern for a blameless life of feminine virtue?’  

‘But you _do_ ―’

Anquetil’s eyebrow shot up.

‘―virtue, I mean, not feminine―and it was all my fault―breaking into Mariners.’

‘ _What_?’  

‘I mean―if I hadn’t―and then gone back after you warned me―’

‘―that was fairly fatuous, yes―’

‘It was because―I wanted to keep you―private, somehow. So I couldn’t explain to the others properly.’

‘You are a very singular child.’

‘And, anyway, if Foley hadn’t caught us―’

‘―then none of it would have happened? Well, naturally. Lewis would have ended his life with a bullet to the brain in a back alley in Vilnuis, or on the gallows at Wandsworth. And in the former case some rather trivial papers might have fallen into the hands of some unpleasant people, and in the latter they wouldn’t.’

‘Trivial?’

‘Sorry. I don’t mean _worthless_. But, yes, trivial: all the information that Lewis was transmitting was in Soviet hands a couple of weeks later at most. That’s how it is, it’s how it works.They don’t have just one agent on the books. Nor do we. That’s what people buy with their lives: a few days more of the enemy not knowing what you’re up to. At best.’  

‘Yes, I suppose,’ she said, gulping down the last of her tea. Something didn’t seem quite as settled about it as Anquetil’s imperturbable cynicism suggested. It occurred to her what that was. 

‘But―but―if he’d got away or been caught and h―hanged―you at least wouldn’t have been―’

‘He would still have left behind the letters that put them onto me. Lewis was careless about everything.’

She shook her head.‘That wasn’t it, though, was it? If it had been that way, it would have been Lewis Foley, defector, traitor.’ She dusted her hands as she had seen people do in the pictures. ‘As it was, because we were involved, there had to be a cover-up―and that’s why you―’

‘Possibly. Probably, actually. The Yanks have been getting their knickers in a twist―never mind. It doesn’t mean it was your fault.’ 

‘So if I hadn’t gone to Mariners―’ she insisted.

‘ _Sine qua non_ rather than _causa causans_ , my dear.Do you know what I mean?’

‘No, not really.’

‘Well, you know the _words_?They do teach you that much?’

‘Yes. _Without which it wouldn’t have_ and _cause that causes_.’

‘Quite. Or, _thee_ and _me_ , lass.’

‘But you didn’t do anything _wrong_ ―that I can see. You just―’Any possible termination to this sentence encroached dangerously on sweetly pretty thoughts; still, Nicola did not expect Anquetil’s reaction to be quite so sharp.

‘You don’t know what the hell I did, Nicola.Or at least I bloody well hope you don’t.’

‘I―don’t think it’s any of my business.Or anyone’s except yours.’

‘Well now, _there_ I agree. Along with about fifteen hundred blokes in the Scrubs, you might be interested to know. But it’ll take a bit of time for the rozzers to catch us up.’

‘I hope so. I don’t want them fingering my collar.’

He laughed.‘Nor your schoolmistresses.What time is your train back―you do know?’

‘Four-eleven.’

‘And you’ve a return ticket?

‘ _Natch_. I’m not an utter clod.’  

‘Could’ve fooled me. From the central station? I’d better walk you to St Denys. Wait in the hall while I dress, will you?’ 

This time, instead of just glares from the children, there were taunts. When Nicola’s ears adjusted to them, she found the terms, though gross enough, were not quite what she had expected.Anquetil walked on, grim-faced. She turned to him, querying.  

‘They daren’t try it on with Lucia. You can probably imagine what her lungs can do at full tilt. And in Patois: they’re superstitious about it, the little devils. So her lodgers get the benefit.’

‘But why don't you―they wouldn't try it on with you in a temper either.’

‘See sense. I don’t think people here know, not yet, and I hope I'm elsewhere before they do.But if something were to come out―and I’d ever been within twenty yards of a little boy―’

‘How _can_ they think that? It’s so―’ she was about to protest _unfair_.

‘Nicola. _Don’t_ , please.’She remembered how he had enjoyed the company of Ginger and Jackie Peterson, the patient, evident pleasure he’d taken in teaching them to tie knots or gut a mackerel.An equivalent misery now marked his face, like acid biting into a copper plate.

On the platform at St Denys they shook hands.

‘May I,’ Nicola asked hesitantly, ‘may I write to you?’

‘To make up for your marked disinclination so far? I should like it very much, but it might be best not―’

‘That’s what _he_ said,’ she muttered frustratedly, ‘and I still don’t understand _why_.’

‘Who? Oh, Ralph. I think I know why, though I’m not sure I can explain before the three-twenty-seven pulls in and drowns me out.To hell with it.Write.' 

The train proceeded to do just that; Anquetil took her hand once again and squeezed it quickly between his. He didn’t wait to wave her off, and she took that, as it was meant, to be an assurance of continued acquaintance.

* 

Esther and Miranda sat under the one of the parapets on the roof, their fingers lightly and companionably entwined.   

‘I wonder if we’ll ever know,’ Esther said, her voice still a little unsteady. 

Miranda shrugged. ‘Maybe she’ll write, but I doubt she’ll _say_.You know how it is: School and Home and never the twain shall meet. Lawrie might tell Tim, but not us.' 

‘What happens, do you know? Does stuff leak out, or is it all terribly shameful and _disowning_ ―’ Esther hiccuped.

‘I honestly don’t know.It’s never happened in my time: I mean, it might’ve when I was on Junior Side and too young to know, but not since I’ve been _conversant_.’

Esther digested this. ‘Gosh.’

‘I always thought Keith made a lot of racket, but was like the head in _Stalky_ ―you know, never except for beastliness and stealing.’

‘Nick’s not― _beastly_.’

‘Oh, Ess―’ Miranda turned to discern a damp flicker of mischief in Esther’s wan smile. 'No, such a very _clean_ girl.'  

‘Poor Lawrie, though. Do you know what she’s going to do?’

‘Once she stops being in floods on Tim’s bosom, you mean? Not a clue. It would be squandering the Prosser a bit to follow Nick to the local Grammar or wherever she ends up, I suppose, but that might not be absolutely uppermost in her mind.’

‘I wish there was something we could do.’

‘Deputation, you mean? March up to Keith on Visiting Day and announce the whole school's immoral, so cashier the lot of us?' 

'I don't think Nick would thank us, do you?' 

Miranda wriggled. ' _Imagine_ the out-cutlasses-and-board look, though. I do wish I'd made more of an effort. She’d been a bit skittish since the hols. I thought she just had a dose of the galloping Lower Fifths.’

Esther bit her lower lip; Miranda hoped she hadn't set her off again. 'Me too. Effort, I mean. I was spending an awful lot of time with Barby and Sally―but I thought that was what Nick w―wanted―'

'Quite nice girls. _Ever_ such nice girls,' Miranda sighed. 'Well, that can't be helped. It isn't as if we were giving her the cold shoulder. Rather the reverse.' 

‘It _can't_ only have been making a run for it. I did that and I didn't get the sack: it wasn't even that bad a row, in hindsight.  I didn't quite see it like that at the time, admittedly. I wonder if it was that boy that her sister was phoning?’

‘I could never quite work out if he was the one Nick wrote to―the hawk one―or someone else.Nick's grime sheet was a bit longer and muckier than yours, though. She'd been sort of on notice since the Conduct Mark.’ 

‘Mmm.’ Esther felt in her pocket. ‘Barley sugar?’

‘Thanks.’

They both perceived a distant, thin, perilous shrill.  

‘Was that First Lesson?’ Esther asked.

‘Think so.’

They didn’t move.

 

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies to Susan for borrowing Lucia, only to imagine a rather dingy old age for her.
> 
> My thanks to [AJHall](http://archiveofourown.org/users/AJHall/works) for [this](http://trennels.livejournal.com/103554.html?thread=1643650#t1643650) comment on legal concepts of causation which inspired a bit of dialogue.


End file.
